Judging and Accepting

My friend from India upon hearing about my growing up in an all-white community within an almost all-white area asked about when I first met an African-American person in college, “How did you react? Was it curiosity? Was it with a feeling of repulsion? Or fear?”

I replied, “No, pretty much just like any human. I notice things about people, but I didn’t notice anything in particular about black people.”

But, I had to admit, that when I meet a very tattooed and pierced person today that I need to quickly step back in my mind and have an attitude adjustment. Then, when I talk with them, I almost always find a very nice person within.

I was listening to John Ortberg recently. He was talking about judging. He challenged us to find one place in the New Testament were Jesus judged people. As Ortberg put it, “Jesus connected with people, not corrected them.”

The challenge for us is–can we change our judging attitude into an attitude of acceptance?